Unofficial news and tips about Google

November 30, 2011

How to Try Google's New Navigation Menu

Google has recently announced a new interface that hides the navigation menu until you mouse over the logo. If you'd like to try to interface before, you can edit your Google cookie and use some values that trigger the new UI.

If you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+, open google.com in a new tab, load Chrome's JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J), Firefox's Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K), Safari's Web Inspector (how to do that?) or IE's Developer Tools (press F12 and select the "console" tab) and paste the following code:

Then press Enter and close the console. If you're not in the US and you're using a different Google domain, replace ".google.com" with your domain in the code (for example: ".google.co.uk" in the UK). Please note that this only works for the English interface, so you many need to adjust the language in the preferences page.

Google is being run by Indians, managerially and technically. Even though Page and Schmidt are CEO and Executive Chairman of Big G, but still we can’t forget that it was Amit Singhal, an IIT Roorkey Graduate, who re-wrote the whole algorithm of Google Search Engine in 2000 which made Google the best in the industry. Then, Nikesh Arora of BHU-IT is the Chief Business Manager; Vic Goundotra is the man behind the whole Google Plus… and, many many more. Search FAMOUS INDIANS WORKING IN GOOGLE for more details.

Once the window gets smaller than 980px in width, things start to vanish off the right hand side. Not a problem for people who have the browser full screen, but for those who have it next to something else, this is just bad!

If we could configure the links we see on there, that would be AWESOME. I use Voice and Calendar more than YouTube or Shopping. But other than that it looks good just let me put on there the service I use.

Works perfectly for me on Firefox as well as Chrome 15.xxThe only thing I had to do was access google.com and not .co.in or .nl etc.Looks good till now, but there should be a possibility for reordering the list on user preference.

I don't like ittoo much grey space (very ugly when you have an image background)redondancy in the functions (on the right side "your name" and "your photo" give the same info when you click on them. it should be only the photo.

On this website you can find a variety of tools that can help you prepare English language exercises within minutes. And its all FREE! COPY/PASTE or write the text you want to use in to our generators. Tools For English Language

@Crius and others. This UI works only in En locale for now.The error in 'ntp4_intro_url' could indicate that your locale is set to a diff lang. Go into the account settings page and change your primary language to English if you want to check out this new design.

This seems to be related to a problem I have with ChromeOS. Somewhere it redirects to a home/welcome/intro page with the locale. Hebrew locale completely blocks Google pages.I'm guessing Google planned for automatic localization support but didn't include a 'default' landing page...

Another pointless update from google that didn't improve anything and actually made their services more cumbersome to access. Before if I wanted to go to Maps, News, Images, or Finance, I could just click a regular old fashioned link at the top, didn't even have to wait for the page to load. Now I have to wait for the page to finish loading before I can even see the menu. This is just like when they changed the news page a few months ago and made that worse too. What is it with these monkeys working for web companies that think the best way to improve something is to add a lot of java script and flash features? Don't these retards know that simplicity is best. What ever happened to good old fashioned HTML links? There's no improving on that!

I totally agree with you, they're silly monkeys with computers trying to reinvent the wheel of the Internet search experience.Lets face it Google has hit a development wall that they do not know what new idea to bring.

I JUST DONT WANT THE LINKS TO OPEN IN NEW TABS, EITHER IN THE OLD BAR OR THE NEW MENU. Eg: I'm in Gmail, I click Documents -> I wanna see documents, not another tab opening. If I have many tabs open I have to look for it and select it etc.. if I continue switching I end up with a mess = many TABS, many of them doubled.

The drop-down interface is slow, clunky, and hard to use. It hides critical functionality where users can't see it. What will people do who aren't computer-savvy enough to mouse over the logo?

As Bruce Tognazzini recently posted,

"Graphic designers, left unchecked and unschooled, are likely to aim for maximum visual simplicity at the expense of both learnability and usability. Such interfaces require users to discover new capabilities by clicking around and seeing what happens. Users don't do that. In the most extreme cases, functionality desperately needed by the majority of users may actually be removed from products in the effort to generate visual simplicity."

It's nice update by Google. I give them props for coming up with it. Although I like the one before simply because it was simple and easy to use. It had everything I needed so I was okay with it but this is also great.

So now the new navigation menu is live for all, and a disaster for some, the sites option is no longer included without going to "even more!" Any ideas on how to edit the content of this navigation menu?

I wonder how many people here applied the YouTube cookie hack back in mid November (this is GoogleSystem Blog, chances are high) and don't realize that a side-effect of the YouTube cookie hack was that they can see the new header in other Google services as of Dec 1st. Clear your Google cookies people, you may get the old header back.

Please let us configure this! Or at least put Scholar on the menu! I use Scholar as much as I use Web Search, and it's nowhere to be found on the menu!! I'm considering switching to Microsoft Academic Search if Scholar isn't easily accessible anymore (please don't make me do that!).

AMEN !! Ditto! Exactly. Notice that Google has become like all Mega Corporations.,. too busy to actually talk to users.Apparently not listening to this forum either.It's an excuse for egos too busy thinking big thoughts to bother with the users, and money and short-term profits above service, it appears.It doesn't matter how fast, glitzy and great products are, it you tick off enough professionals (legal, science, inventors, etc.), some will come back to compete with them as a matter of principle.

I'm using a script to reconfigure Reader, and the script interacts poorly with the black bar menu layout. So, I use your fix to apply the new Google menu style and all is great. However, every time I restart FF8, it reverts to the old black bar. Is there a way to make this fix permanent? Thanks.

The top bar is too thick and the 'hidden' navigation bar comes up on loading the page forcing me to hide it. Bring back the thin old top bar so I can enjoy my background image rather than view it in spite of. IMHO EPIC FAIL! >:-P

Hate the new wide grey bar. Extra clicking to open, extra mousing to get to my most-used apps, and the G+ options are too prominent - I liked how subtle they were in the black bar (made it more palatable logged in at work). I REALLY want to be able to choose what I see first - half the stuff I need requires extra digging.

I don't like the new drop down menu being dropped down already. It is an eye sore. I click the logo every time I google to get rid of it, then I click back in the search field. Adding steps to get rid of the badly designed unsightly large black drop down menu. Please give some sort of option to get rid of it.

Nice Work Alex!I had to install Firefox which came up with the new look by default.Wondering why I was not seeing the same in IE9 I spent over an hour searching until I found this blog.Clear instructions, easy to follow.

i don't like this innovation at all. It complicates things from "one click on scholar" to actually going through several steps. It's really annoying. What's even worse...I can't find a way to reverse back to the old version!

rather than give me the drop down menu it gave me this new sort of menu, similar to the one before the drop down one but with bigger spacing, and no red line above the things like web and images. And the fonts a little thicker.

i know, it looks like what we had in the 90's (i wasn't around then). i liked the drop down menu, but i think google may have changed it to this one (the one that we have) because so many people complained about the drop down menu, even though it was the best thing to happen to google since google.

PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE GIVE US THE NEW INTERFACE BACK. It's pretty annoying having to use bookmarks to access specific Google services such as Google Music and Voice while services I don't ever use stare at me every time I'm on the Google homepage.